Cate's Season.

I'm at the door taking deep breaths, not the kind you do after a small mouthy dog has been chasing you. Those small things have a way of frightening everyone, like they can just sneak up into you and bite the most delicate part of your existence. So you find yourself running, unlike the big ones, you hardly run from them when they are serious, you just freeze and let your soul do the running.

I'm taking deep controlled breaths, the kind you do when you feel a deep trembling in your stomach and your heart wants to jump out from pounding too loud, so you have to breathe deep to relax everything, and most particularly hold the heart in place, then try to act absolutely fine which sometimes has lot's of peculiarities and takes people with special eyes to see.

 I'm very nervous, it happens when you know exactly what to expect but not how to handle it.

 I ran into the old man at the door, always do, but he's always coming in on my way out, so I quickly figured there's a mountain already stuffed in Cate's Mood, not the huge mountain that with enough training you can manoeuvre you breath and endurance through to the top, the unstable kind of mountain, never sure where to step, what to hold on to. Anything can come crumbling down, hard and fast.

He had a face, fully dressed in fatigue. The kind you have when tears have been bashed out despite the fact that you were never crying. Eyes that says you can't sleep because when fatigue calls for some rest grief prods them awake. A face that is past help and now just pleading for an explanation, something to subdued the confusion. 

Standing at a height tall enough when height is required, bald to the cranium. Glasses loosely hanging by the  mercy of his wide slightly pointed nose, whiter than white shirt carefully tucked in brown khaki pants slightly covering his daily safari boots. I knew the look, he definitely had a meeting afterwards, probably one with his mechanic. I noticed a knock on the rear bumper and there's no way he keeps such for more than a day. 

We've met a couple times after learning I that was among the most frequent visitors to the daughter in this rehab, not this one alone but a couple, she's been in and out. He said his greetings, from a faint voice, like a boulder had been stuffed deep inside his throat, talk to your friend  he said , gently looking at me to parade his eyes of defeat then smiled like a loaded gun, maybe to make sure his words sank.

One thing about grief is that if it doesn't bring you together it will find a way to tear you apart in every possible way. It happens that when the world owes us equally we must find a base from which we can all call in our debts and what a terrible appetite grief has, the child of death that never gets enough. It can eat the flesh, blood and bones and times even the memories you could have survived on. How unfamiliar it can feel to be around each other. So that defines the father daughter relationship.

There's a loud bang on the visitor's room door as it swings wide open and the nurse in a blue half-coat rushes in, alarmed by the thunderous laughter, then stands still to analyze the situation, the kind of act-then-think situation I find quite absurd. 

My hands high up in the air as Cate is trying to catch a breath, the kind you do from laughing hard and feels like if you dare open your mouth to let out another laugh it might come with everything inside of you, so now you busy restraining yourself from letting out another laugh but can't help it, and everything is now painful inside.

 I've mastered a few jokes to always get her laughing hard, but it's the fact that I must swing my hands to determine which is left from right that always cracks her  harder. So my hands in the air was me trying to figure out which side of the bumper had a scratch.

This is her third rehab centre she's been to in the last two years, and you can tell she's doing better, not better at her problems but at managing everyone in the facility. She knows what to tell and how to tell them, to give them a touch of progress and need. It happens when you've done something long enough, the kind that you cannot tell whether it's flying or falling.

We met at an art exhibition a few years before and five years after the mother passed on. Not that she was an artist, but every techie always feels there's a Picasso in them, a DaVinci looming somewhere.

 So In her humongous JBL she passed her phone, signing to me to take a picture of her standing next to a piece she liked that happened to be mine. I didn't appreciate the gesture, so I returned a you can't boss me around miss eye as I slid the phone into my back pocket, forcing her take off the headphones and say hello as I pretended deaf and she had to move closer, the kind of close that becomes awkward if you don't break you deaf act and say something. Too close to my face, clearly she had issues with boundaries and greetings and politely asking people to take pictures of her and from that we are still counting years of friendship of deaf acts, tech ,art and trips in and out of hospital and rehab centres.

Her mastering the act of survival here doesn't come as a surprise, she's super smart. The kind of smart you start creating your own problems to make life more challenging. She had been on a year program abroad after outshining her whole University's tech department and other couple universities, all that participated to be specific. It's in her abroad endeavour she got introduced to some ways to spike life with bigger challenges in the form of pills and injections.

 She thought she had control, every addict always thinks they do. Things got out of hand months after returning back and now she's been in and out of hospital and rehab for overdose, relapse and other escapes.

Between the father and the daughter lies a long gone wife and a mother. A centre of existence, a hollow that each has tried to fill, but gets worse. 

The truth is, if you stay alive for long it could mean you've given others enough time to leave you behind, that's the father and sometimes life ceases to exist after some people are gone because you were never ready and now the hows and whys to live become hard to understand, so you just exist , that's the daughter. Letting the tide take you wherever.

 In simple terms, Some people have someone they'd die for because they can't figure out how life is supposed to be lived, the why and how without them. So maybe if death should pass by it should take them first because they cease to exist otherwise.

Much has been taught, none on how to grieve.

Some people can never be replaced, she thinks. So she's never understood why there's another woman in her house, in her mother's room and with her mother's most precious person, and something like that can make you put up with living alone, so the last time she set foot at home was the same day she landed back to find another woman , another mother another wife to the father and every attempt he's made to explain why some hollow needs filling, some trains need alighting, that people help people has been futile.

Some actions never make sense, he thinks. So he's always conflicted. Can't figure out whether it's regret or disappointment he feels. He never understands how she turned up an addict, how a bright mind is busy finding a self rather than a purpose, but at most, is how grief has eaten even the slight memories that could bind them together, memories of a mother, a family. 

So he's never sure what to express each time he walks into another case of overdose or relapse, suicide attempt, pity or disappointment. He hopes, and with every leap he carries her to the next hospital and next rehab facility, sometimes he tries to give conditions for the unconditional love of parent, sobriety for availability, but he can never walk away even from someone who wants nothing to do with him, so it's the hope that slowly eats him away.

So of the slings and arrows of life, you can find enmity in each other when you lack a common one, but how do you team up if the enemy is grief with a unique way of hurting everyone and never gets enough, it can take everything, even memories, tearing each one in different ways.

As I gently dropped my arms, assuring the nurse that everything is in control I noticed that she had a fresh stitched cut on her wrist. I thought to myself there should be more pleasant ways of taking your life especially if you are someone who has already tried a couple even tried practicing being dead, there should be a more quick and accurate one if indeed you've decided to.

 She noticed and tried to hide it under the table. I didn't inquire, just gently dipped my hand into the bag to get the laptop which had been running since I left home, just on sleep mode because I couldn't wait to show her the Christmas gift i'd gotten her, seeing a cloud of curiosity already gathering. 

The last time I did this I showed her my first digital piece. I didn't like it, she thought it was cool. She's mastered the best way to always tell people what they need to hear at the exact moment.

 This time had figured out a couple bugs in her final project she had been working on before things went south-south, and not only the bugs, I had finished everything to detail as she had always described it. 

Up and running perfectly I said as I handed her the laptop. It took a couple silent minutes as I hopefully waited for her perfect techie mind to kick in and criticize my arrangement of code and files as she had mastered, but I was met with tears and the next thing was a tight hug around my shoulders and neck.

 

In a moment everything ugly that had happened that morning faded or maybe has disappeared for a while now.

 I figured the father being disappointed or in pain, can't be sure he was feeling after another suicide attempt. 

She was her again, a techie an art lover and I was already acting deaf again, just to get more of her thank you and you are really a genius, it helps getting such from someone you admire their capabilities in a particular field especially if she's mastered the act of denying you want you need even though you've earned it.

I had my first lunch at rehab facility after the two or so years I've been visiting, not that I was served my own plate, they can't do that, visitor's always come well fed and never in their budget. I had her share, she was too excited to even eat so she forced the food on me, it didn't like it she saw it ,but didn't care, eyes fixed trying to add some little adjustments, casually mentioning something to do with soft boy, weak stomach. 

This was her engaging her techie mind perhaps her whole mind, her life, a glimpse of hope I said to myself feeling a sense of satisfaction from awakening a part of her that has since defiantly stayed a wake for a year and counting today. 

 So this way most precious Christmas gift to anyone in a lifetime a year ago, she keeps on mentioning it. Helping them back to what they knew, who they where , a sense of purpose again.

There's a box of brand new  Adidas kicks I'm yet to open, I'm still stuck on a note that I wish I had the chance to act deaf to, just to hear her say every single word, again and again, closer to my face, not awkwardly close of course. It's a celebration for a year of sobriety and six months of maintaining her job, things are still ugly, but taking shape with the old man, something needs time so you give them even more, but a win is a win.  I silently replied in my head merry Christmas and happy 2025 Cate.

To mental health and sobriety!

Merry Christmas and happy New year to you also.